Monthly Archives: July 2020

Cheap is as Cheap Does.

Pssst… hey kid, wanna try a sight? First taste is free…

Let’s talk about cheap sights for AR platform guns, mostly because I am cheap. I recently have had a chance to test four sights, two red dots and two sets of iron sights. Two of these I bought, and two were provided as test samples. We’re going to cover the freebies in this installment, both provided by the same company. I actually purchased these sights on Amazon and was immediately reimbursed via Paypal, before I wrote the reviews.

Feyachi RS-25 Reflex Sight

Feyachi Gold offered to send me a sight to test, their RS-25. Uhhh… do I want a free red dot? Let me think… I made it clear that the sight would receive an honest review and they sent it anyway, which speaks well of their confidence at least.

The RS-25 retails at Amazon for just shy of $50, and I’ve looked at $50 Red Dots before so I was prepared to be unimpressed. When the sight arrived I was surprised- it was well packed, had complete instructions written in good English, came with a spare CR2032 battery and an Allen wrench for installing and adjusting the sight. More importantly the sight is solid, machined from 6065 aircraft aluminum. Reading the manual it said that the sight would withstand an 800G shock, and could be used with large-caliber weapons with heavy recoil- even with spring-air rifles (which are notorious for messing up sights with their bi-directional recoil.)

The sight seems very solid, but it does not appear that the electronics are sealed against immersion; you can see what appears to be a circuit board and a wire underneath. Fair enough, they make no claims that it’s fully waterproof. It doesn’t look like casual wetting will disable it. It mounts on a standard Picatinny rail and is secured by Allen screws with the provided wrench. I mounted it on my AR 9mm, and while it is a bit lower than my normal optic it’s comfortable enough and easy to use.

The RS-25 mounted on my 9mm AR

The sight has a wide field of view- 15m@100 yards, and has four different reticles selected by a lever at the back of the sight. These are a 5MOA dot, a 10 MOA dot, a crosshair and a circled dot. I tried to photograph the different options, but no luck, so here’s an image from the manual:

The four optional reticles- 5 MOA dot, 10 MOA dot, crosshair and 5MOA dot in 50 MOA circle. You can see the selector on the bottom-rear of the sight.

The sight has a knob on the right (which is also the battery compartment) to adjust the brightness. There are eleven different settings, and 11 is bloody bright. The top setting might be useful at high noon on a glacier, but I mostly used it from 1-6 depending on the lighting.

The optics are clear and almost entirely distortion free, unlike most cheap red dots I’ve seen. The coating cuts glare in bright light, but seems to make dark areas slightly clearer and brighter. Neat trick; I dig it. So how’s it work on the range? Like a red dot sight. A pretty decent red dot sight. It was easy to zero, with positive clicks of the adjustment screw, and soon bullets were hitting where I aimed them, if not actually where I was trying to aim them. I was able to produce reasonable off-hand groups at 25 yards and ran several strings of double-taps at ten yards. I found I preferred the circled dot, and used it most of the time. I dismounted the sight and remounted it, and it held zero. (for COVID reasons I was at Champion Arms indoor range, so 25 yards was the max.)

OK, but is it durable? I decided to find out. It’s pretty standard to drop the sight a few times from whatever height seems appropriate, but this has never struck me as a useful test. Since I wasn’t about to drop my rifle repeatedly I had to come up with alternat6ive means.

My ‘alternative means.’

A Pittsburgh 16oz. dead-blow hammer seemed just the thing, and I whacked the sight fairly hard on the battery housing, top and sides. Hard to quantify exactly, but I was trying for harder than one might casually bang the sight into something in normal use. I didn’t really expect to break the sight, so I was not too surprised that it continued to function. I ran a target out to 25 yards, and I’ll be damned if it didn’t hold it’s zero! I was actually kinda’ impressed.

So, picking nits: I’d rather have it mount with a coin-slot knurled nob. I’m not keen on needing an Allen wrench both for mounting and adjusting the sights. That’s pretty much it. It’s functional and pretty tough, but to me the fact that it doesn’t seem to be fully waterproof disqualifies it from field use here in the Pacific Northwet.

I rated this a conditional 5 stars on Amazon, because for someone looking for a light-duty optic for plinking, a range toy or even home defense I can’t see how you could do better for $50.

Feyachi 45 Degree Offset Iron Sights Flip Up BUIS Rapid Transition Backup Front and Rear Iron Sight Set

Lord, that’s a mouthful, innit’? First things first- I have zero experience with this sort of offset sight. Nada. You probably already know this, but these are generally used in conjunction with a magnifying optic. Need to shoot fast at close range or broke your scope? Tilt the gun and keep shooting. That’s the idea anyway. I don’t have a magnifying optic and my current flip-up sights co-witness with my red dot, so I don’t really need these.

So, again these came decently packaged with an Allen wrench for mounting them, but no manual or instructions. The sights are solidly made from aluminum, and seem reasonably tough for what they are. Truth be told I may have mounted these backwards, but tilting the gun to the left was awkward, so I stuck ’em on the right. Deal with it. They fold nice and flat, and at the press of a button on each sight they pop up and lock in place. Press the button again to fold them flat. The work just as they should, and I found I could press the buttons without shifting my grip with either hand.

The front sight is height adjustable without tools, and the rear sight has a knob with nice, positive clicks for adjustment. I was able to zero them at twenty five yards with no problem at all. The rear sight can flip to offer either a Ghost Ring or peephole sight, and both shot to the same POI. Flipping the sights up and down over and over did not affect the zero, and the sight picture will be familiar to anyone who has used an M16.

The sights were more than good enough for rapid-fire at twenty-five yards.

I gave these a four-star rating on Amazon, mainly because the front sight rocked back and forth a bit when locked in the upright position. It didn’t seem to have any practical effect at the ranges I was shooting at but at longer ranges it might… and besides, it was the only thing about these sights that felt sloppy so it stood out.

I won’t be replacing my flip-ups with these sights because I don’t need to… but if I did need offsets I’d be fine with using these. This set of sights costs a bit under $30, and if you want back-up sights on a budget these will do the the job.

Next time…

…I’ll be reviewing a red dot and flip-up sights I actually paid for.

Hope you are all well and safe in these uncertain times.

Michael Tinker Pearce, 8 July 2020

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Finally Finished: 1873 Sheriff’s Model in .251 TCR

Last year I needed a gun to test the new cartridge I was developing, .251 TCR. I had an Italian percussion version of the 1873, so I converted it to fire center-fire cartridges and chambered it for the new round. It had some issues and I really didn’t like the look of the cylinder, but it did the job. I always intended to finish it up properly, but never got around to it.

It’s actually a six shooter, but you need to leave an empty chamber under the hammer. I never liked the liners showing in the gaps where the percussion caps went originally; it looks make-shift and unfinished.

Another issues was ejecting the empty shells. I’d shortened the barrel to 3-1/2″ for test purposes, and since it was just a test gun I didn’t fit an ejector. Because of the way I was using it removing the cylinder to load and unload wasn’t too much a problem. Later when I looked at doing one I discovered the placement of the ejector housing made it hard to adapt it for the smaller caliber.

Since this is effectively what people call a ‘Sheriff’s Model’ and the extractor was going to be a pain, I did what Colt did and ground off the ejector housing. Now I can easily unload by poking out the empties with a rod. First issue fixed. Now for the big one; a bespoke cylinder. I actually started this in May, and it sat through the month of June on the lathe, half-finished. I finally decided it was time.

I finished the lathe work and got ready to cut the lock notches and decided to try something new. It’s a bloody big cylinder for six rounds of a .25-caliber cartridge; why not make it eight? I’ve never done an eight-shot cylinder before so I was a bit nervous, but I went for it. I will say, it’s a lot easier to locate eight notches than six. Just divide the cylinder into quarters and divide the quarters in half.

I really need to find a better way to make lock notches. I normally use a cut-off wheel in a Dremel (a Foredom, actually, but everyone knows what a Dremel is) but this makes rather over-size notches. This time I used a carbide bur, and it worked but they have a crude look to them. I guess I need to keep looking…

After the lock notches were cut I line-bored the cylnder, then cut the chambers and honed them. For this I used a 1/4″ tool-steel rod, and superglued a single layer of 1500-grit sandpaper to it. I mounted it in a hand-drill and went into the chambers with it. Rinse and repeat until everything is smooth and shiny.

This is the point where the pucker-factor went through the roof. I did not have an eight-shot cylinder to get some idea where to cut the ratchet to rotate the cylinder correctly, and didn’t know if I would need to replace the hand or if the stock one would do. I looked things over carefully and decided, ‘OK, about there…’ I took a deep breath before getting started, because if I screwed this up it would not be fixable, and hours of work would be down the drain.

I didn’t screw it up. I cut the ratchet and was easily able to adjust it to work correctly, and I didn’t need to change the stock hand. *Whew!* I polished the cylinder, then threw on a quick coat of Van’s Instant Blue. I’ll get around to rust-bluing it later.

Looking very dapper with it’s new, un-fluted cylinder.
A bit more svelte with the unused ejector housing removed.
Eight shots… well, seven really; I still need to leave the hammer down on an empty chamber for safety.

So the .251 TCR revolver is finally finished… for values of finished. Like, ‘It’s finished until I find a really sweet piece of wood/horn/antler to make cool grips.’ Or I come up with some other thing I just have to do, like lowering the hammer spur… Hmmm, lowering the hammer spur… For me a gun like this is not so much a thing as a process, but I can at least say this stage of the process is complete, and I’m happy with it.

Michael Tinker Pearce, 2 July 2020